Glenn Beck’s rally: Next year in Jerusalem!

After holding the Restoring Honor Rally on Washington’s National Mall last summer, Glenn Beck has planned his latest large-scale political event, this time taking his conservative politics (plus some religion and prophesy here and there) to Israel.

The Restoring Courage Rally will take place on the streets of Jerusalem in August, when Beck and followers will voice support for Israel.

“They are going to attack the center of our faith, our common faith, and that is Jerusalem. It won’t be with bullets and bombs. It will be with a two-state solution that cuts off Jerusalem, the old city, to the rest of the world,” he said during the announcement, made Monday on his radio program.

“I believe I have been asked to stand in Jerusalem. Many in the history of man have had the opportunity to stand with the Jewish people…time and time again people have had the opportunity and they have failed.”

Jewish news sites have pointed out the right-wing host’s strong support of Israel, but note that his controversial “shock jock” style has hit their community too.

“Beck, who is ardently pro-Israel, nonetheless angered an array of Jewish groups recently for likening the quest for ‘social justice’ to Nazism and for falsely insinuating that liberal philanthropist and Holocaust survivor George Soros was a Nazi collaborator,” they wrote.

Beck has been making strides, though: He announced that he will speak at the upcoming Christians United for Israel conference, held by San Antonia megachurch pastor John Hagee. Though Hagee and Beck may share a conservative Christian crowd and political views regarding the Jewish state, Beck’s Mormonism changes things a bit.

“Mormons may diverge from Hagee on some details of the last days (Mormon theology is usually characterized as premillenialist) but we do read the Book of Revelation,” writes Joanna Brooks for Religion Dispatches.

She describes how Beck’s guru, “the LDS ultra-conservative” Cleon Skousen teaches the Mormon end-times does involve Israel, which will be invaded by Gentile armies who kill two apostles to trigger the opening of the Mount of Olives and the return of Christ.

“Is Beck making himself out to be a prophet?” she asked. “It wouldn’t be the first time that he danced with prophetic rhetoric. By now, though, we should all know that Beck is less interested in plying his own virtues than in plugging into the fears of his followers. After burning through conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory over the last few years, Beck is looking to wreak havoc in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process by exploiting the most powerful fear-generating narrative of them all: the apocalypse.”